The Ebola outbreak has revealed serious resource mobilization problems at the world’s “go-to” response agency, according to some global health experts.
Tackling the disease in West Africa — where ill-equipped national health systems and lack of infrastructure have spurred the rampant spread of the deadly virus — has been a tall challenge for the World Health Organization, and made all the more difficult by the U.N. agency’s funding structure.
“They basically have a begging bowl,” Lawrence Gostin, WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights director, said Sept. 3 during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.